In the end, sentiment led to "ugly' win

GWEN KNAPP, EXAMINER COLUMNIST

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, June 4, 1997

1997-06-04 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- WILLIE BROWN was acting like an athlete in championship lather, slapping his hands over his eyes, punching his fists in the air and pulling on a baseball cap, the modern crown of choice for victors in football, basketball and now land-use / bond-issue referenda.

The mayor deftly uncorked some cheap bubbly and, with shocking disregard for his refined palate, took a swig. He danced with a group of singers, who saluted him with a musical cheer. The words got lost in the jubilation, and only a careful ear could discern "Da . . . Mayor, Da . . . Mayor."

From a distance, though, the cheer sounded like "Go Raiders." This seemed an unlikely way to celebrate the voters' embrace of the 49ers, but the campaign had certainly sent out other muffled, nonsensical, self-defeating messages. Why stop at the finish line?

"There's an old Chinese proverb that says an ugly victory is better than 1,000 glorious defeats," Niners President Carmen Policy said after kissing the top of the mayor's head, now liberated from the baseball cap.

"Winning ugly" should have been retired to the sports cliche Hall of Fame years ago. But by the earliest hours of Wednesday morning, cliches had become acceptable, even welcome. They offered clarity, a relief from rhetoric that routinely put two and two together and ended up with less than zero.

Post-election, team owner Eddie DeBartolo said he had spent the evening reflecting on his two decades as a dynasty-builder in San Francisco.

"I have spent a lot of money. I have cried. I have bled. I have sweated," he said. At one point after the victory as he stood in front of volunteer campaign workers at Longshoremen's Hall near Fisherman's Wharf, tears surfaced at the pink rims of his eyes.

All along, the 49ers had said they wanted to remove emotion from this election, and as late as Tuesday night, Brown bemoaned the lack of reason in the campaign.

"Facts didn't have a whole lot to do with it," he said early in the evening, when the Niners were down by about a field goal.

But when the numbers turned, the mayor's whole body shook for at least a half-hour, in a volcanic exorcism of four months' tension.

An aide said he had never looked so happy after a win. He was reacting like a sports fan, with a joy that has nothing to do with facts or the economic benefits of an NFL franchise in the back yard or even the jobs to be generated by the passage of the stadium-mall ballot measures.

The sensible side of the mayor believed in those points. But that's the side of him that wears designer hats and consumes the finest foods.

The man who put on the baseball cap, drank from a $7.99 bottle and waved pompons - he's a Niners fan, a season-ticket holder from way back.

Sports have the power to make people forget themselves, to make them delirious. The 49ers and the mayor, their leading advocate, were counting on that power.

"Why did it carry?" DeBartolo said. "I would hope it carried because of an emotion people felt when they went into the ballot box, the emotion for the 49ers."

These emotions weren't, in his view, knee-jerk or irrational. They were real and sanctioned, the kind that, if you have them, make it impossible to see what someone else might not.

While the Niners preyed on that sentiment, the opposition went after those who instinctively object to offering financial aid to a rich man. One emotion is as valid as the other, each leading to its own sort of wisdom. The Niners, though, could never see it that way.

"The opposition was ignorance and cynicism," Policy said.

The Niners believed that they had the facts, a superior project and financing on their side. But unbolstered by football love, their facts wouldn't have been worth a single ballot. They wouldn't have been able to overcome their poor and confusing presentation of the facts or their arrogant assumptions about their significance in The City, home to their park but only 15 percent of their season-ticket holders.

"If we win, there really is a God," the mayor said about an hour before victory was announced, his delirium already approaching. Later, Policy explained the victory by saying, "The guy upstairs really must have wanted for this to happen."

Were they ascribing Niners passion to a higher authority or admitting the disastrous progress of the campaign? Like so much in this election, it remained unclear.

DeBartolo and Policy had set up camp at the Westin St. Francis for the excruciating wait, from the early and awful results to the midnight comeback.

"I handled it very well," Policy joked, "I headed into the men's room and threw up."

When they arrived at the victory party, they looked at once numb and exhilarated. Unlike Brown, they were almost rigid on the stage, as if the win had hit them linebacker-style. DeBartolo even managed to hold back his tears without apparent muscle movement.

They kissed the mayor and said their proper thank-yous. But it didn't matter what they said or how they acted. The crowd loved them - "Eddie, Eddie. Carmen, Carmen" - because they represent the Niners, which is a reason beyond reason.&lt;